Friday, 3 July 2009

Torres Straight

With Quarantine sorted and the strong currents in our favour we sailed on calm seas to the beautiful Torres Straight islands. We had heard Horn was the most protected anchorage and we weren’t disappointed. The aqua blue waters and fringing reefs had us longing for a swim and despite the locals being famous for their pearl and trochus diving industries, we were not going to tempt the crocs.

Next day bright and early we caught the ferry over to Thursday Island to explore. In the searing heat, we cleverly decided to climb to the highest point of Thursday Island to check out its military history. While the views were gorgeous, we decided we had earned a well-deserved cold beer at the local pub – one of the 10 local pubs that is. Incidentally it was Australia’s most northern pub.

The following day we explored the Cultural Museum on Thursday Island. What a fantastic independent museum. It was filled with photographs of the islands history from wartime to Torres Straight culture and Pearl diving. It really struck a chord with me as I was mid way thru reading “One Eleventh of An Elephant”, a memoir of a POW during WWII.

Although we weren’t allowed to buy groceries to take back to the mainland we did check out the grocery stores after hearing rumors about the prices. They were not joking about it being the most expensive place in Australia to live! You just don’t realize how much you take for granted living in a city or major town.

The Quarantine guys had given Simon info on some caves at a nearby island so with the afternoon ebb tide, we set sail for Possession Island.